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Psalms

When I think of your rules from of old,I take comfort, O LORD (Psalm 119:52).

Comfort food, comfort films, comfort friends and comfort rules?

What do you do when you need comfort?

Is there a food you eat to calm your soul? For me lately it’s been Klondike bars. (What would I do? I’d open the freezer door.) But the comfort doesn’t last very long.

Is there a film or TV show you watch to make you relax? Lately, we’ve been watching Arrested Development. Funny, but more troubling than comforting.

Is there a friend you talk with to encourage you? Friends are wonderful, but they’re not always available.

The psalmist finds comfort in rules. Nice huh? A few verses earlier the psalmist needed comfort in affliction and found it in God’s promise, which gave life (for more on Psalm 119:50, click here).

Wait, how do rules bring comfort? Rules bring structure, which is good. Rules set boundaries which we all need. But God’s rules are designed to bring us closer to God. The psalmist might not always have a friend to talk to, but God’s always available. And that’s highly comforting.

How do God’s rules bring us closer to God? Good question. Some rules like love God with all your heart, soul and strength (Deut. 6:5) obviously move us toward God. Other rules like resting on the Sabbath (Deut. 5:12), force us to slow down, rest and make room for God in our lives. Other rules make us dependent upon God, so hopefully we pray for divine assistance to obey.

The psalmist isn’t comforted with just any rules, but old ones. Isn’t that always the case, the old rules are the best ones when you need to be comforted?

The oldest rule, is the first rule that God gave to the freshly made humans, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28). In order to be fruitful and multiply, what do humans need to do? I’m pretty sure that will involve sex. How much sex? Enough to fill the earth. (I discuss this in God Behaving Badly pages 116-118.)

God’s first rule is basically, “Have a lot of sex.” Yes, that’s what it says (in the context of a life-long committed relationship between a man and a woman).

The insolent utterly deride me, but I do not turn away from your law (Psalm 119:51).

The primary human behind the abolition of the slave trade in England, William Wilberforce, memorized Psalm 119 (see Seven Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness, p. 48 by Eric Metaxas). Since I can’t do that, I’ve decided to blog through the 176 verses of this the longest chapter of the Bible all of which are devoted to the psalmist’s obsession with the word of God.

For awhile I was doing one verse each week, but then health problems derailed me in the fall of 2012, and I skipped a few months. I’m slowly getting back to it. I’m now in the third verse of the seventh section (I’ve finished only 29%), the Zayin section where each of the 8 verses begin with the Hebrew letter Zayin. Good English Bibles will show you where the 176 verses are divided into 22 groups of 8, and give you the Hebrew letter title for each section.

Getting back to our story, the psalmist is being derided, mocked and taunted by the insolent, arrogant and proud. Why? The psalmist doesn’t tell us, but it seems connected to the psalmist’s love for God’s law. Despite the derision, the psalmist refuses to turn away from God’s law, suggesting that their abuse could have led the psalmist to reject or abandon it.

There are a lot of reasons why people today might be derided as they cling to God’s commands. Wilberforce was derided by the people of his day because he threatened the status quo by advocating that the slave trade be eliminated. Since all people were made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27-28), he believed they were all equally worthy of respect. I would imagine that his love for Psalm 119 would have encouraged him to stand firm in the face of opposition, specifically as he realized from verses like 51 that the psalmist also experienced persecution.

ZOT. That’s the Hebrew word for “this” (the feminine form actually, ze is the masculine), which is how Psalm 119:50 begins, which makes sense since it is the second verse in the Zayin section of Psalm 119 (verses 49-56) where all 8 verses begin with the Hebrew letter Zayin. (Apparently ZOT is also a noise emitted by aardvarks while capturing their prey.)

What do you do when your discouraged? Sleep? Eat? Shop? Run? Read blogs? Write blogs? All of the above? I don’t shop, although I do like to buy books.

When the psalmist is discouraged, he turns to God’s promise. Which one? Any of them. All of them. I turn to Psalm 119, but the psalmist couldn’t do that yet, because it was still being written.

Psalm 119:50 promises that God’s promise gives life. How does that happen?

1) God’s promise gives us hope, something we all need, particularly when life is rough. Hope sustains, and focuses us on the future when things will be better because God will have worked to keep his promise.

2) God’s promise gives us comfort. We realize that God’s word is full of people who, just like the psalmist here, were in affliction. We aren’t alone as others were depending upon God and his promises alongside us in our affliction. Affliction themes appear repeated throughout this psalm (119:50, 67, 71, 75, 93, 107, 153).

3) God’s promise gives us God. It is his promise (“your” is the most common word in Psalm 119, always attached to a Torah synonym). God is the one who makes the promise and he’s the one who will keep the promise. Focusing on his promise deepens our relationship with God, because it keeps us looking to him.

When I was struggling in the fall of 2012 with stomach reflux, sleeplessness and voice problems, God’s promise gave me hope and comfort. God didn’t promise that he would heal me instantly. It took 6 months, but he comforted me in the midst of my pain. God was present.

Christians should be troubled by, but not afraid of, this verse. I hope my readers who consider themselves Christians know people would consider themselves atheists who they could discuss Psalm 137 with.

A student told me yesterday that her atheist professor embarrassed her in front of the class when he asked about another troubling text, the rape of the Levite’s concubine in Judg. 19. She still vividly remembers this experience decades later.

We Christians too often ignore these troubling texts of the Old Testament, so when they come up in discussions with atheists, agnostics or skeptics, we don’t have an answer.

Check out the Biblical blog for some of my thoughts (I hesitate to call it the “answer”).